EC accepts ‘Validation’

Daily Guide can authoritatively report that despite the hide and seek with the issue of validation, the Electoral Commission (EC) has in principle agreed to do validation or “verification”, as it puts it.

In a letter sent to all political parties constituting the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC), the EC attached a document, titled ‘Audit of the Voters Register’, in which it outlined the process of cleaning-up the register it intends to use during the exhibition process on the election calendar.

The document says that the exhibition period, which usually lasts two weeks, will be extended, in line with the recommendation of the five-member panel that looked into the case for a new register, and will take place in all polling stations across the country.

Significantly, the document states that the EC will deploy biometric verification devices (BVDs) at all polling stations during the exhibition exercise.

The explanation the EC gives is what is said to effectively amount to validation. The EC states, “The use of BVDs at Exhibition Centres [is] to get people who check their names to be verified during exhibition.”

Furthermore, the EC explains that “this, apart from authenticating the voters, would also reduce the incident of false verification and improve efficiency of BVDs on election day.”

When Daily Guide contacted Martin Adjei-Mensah Korsah, the Director of Elections for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), he confirmed that the party had received such a letter for inputs and duly sent its response to the Commission last Monday, the deadline.

Npp’s Position

Mr Adjei-Mensah Korsah said the EC has, through its own actions, made the case in support of validation. “The EC has shown with the way that it intends to undertake this exhibition process with validation machines in all polling stations that it has the resources, in terms of personnel, equipment and funds, to undertake verification or validation or authentication, whichever name it chooses to call it. What is left is for the EC to take the logical step to make it mandatory so that it can truly serve as a proper and necessary auditing process.”

But the NPP is not convinced by this ‘validation’ move. “Yes, it means, in principle, the EC will undertake validation. But I am afraid it may end up being a waste of limited resources,” said Martin.

He added, “The Ec is going through this whole exercise of verification but it appears more to be seen to satisfy what is in the report of the VCRAC Crabbe Committee report, which the committee members themselves are now running away from, than to really clean the register to help give us credible elections.”

This is because according to the NPP, the EC is “stubbornly refusing to make the validation mandatory, and without a law backing it, those who choose to stay away will still have their names on the register for 2016.

“What is proposed in the Panel Report is for every registered voter who intends to vote in 2016 to show up for this verification or authentication exercise or have their names removed from the register, just like what happens when a new register is compiled. But to provide BVDs at all polling stations during exhibition when you have not made validation compulsory is simply to throw away money, frankly,” the NPP elections director said.

Describing the EC’s move as “bizarre and perplexing”, Mr Korsah pointed out that “By refusing to make it mandatory, those who refuse to show up, including the dead, will still have their names on the electoral roll of 2016.

We are likely to still end up with 600, 000 names of dead people and several tens of thousands of non-nationals on the register.

EC’s Justification

The EC document justifies the reason behind this auditing at exhibition centres. It says that the “audit process will address three categories of unqualified persons on the register: deceased persons, minors and foreigners, as well as multiple registrations.”

But how successful can this be when the exercise is not mandatory for those who wish to vote in 2016?

Whiles, per the EC document, the Commission intends to spread a lot of money to ensure “wide publicity of the exercise,” it will also create a portal on its website “to allow voters to check their names and registration details and also allow the public to check and lodge challenges/objections.”

Validation

The NPP sees this as a contradiction. “Whiles using technology is efficient, it would also mean that many registered voters would not see the need to show up at the exhibition centres. The only thing to compel them to do so is to pass a law to make it mandatory for those who are interested in being on a validated list for the 2016 elections,” the party man said

Mr Korsah explained that the same way the compulsory use of BVD during voting was backed by law, the EC must be sincere and prudent enough to make validation of registered voters also mandatory.

For those who say making validation compulsory would disenfranchise Ghanaian voters, the NPP called it a “red herring.”

“It is important we keep the records of registered voters up to date and credible, otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of one-man-vote,” said the NPP.

“Even for registration, there is an administrative cut-off point where after a period even if [your] name is on the register but [you are] not in time to go through the process of exhibition, etc., you will lose the opportunity to vote in that given election.”

To stress the point, the NPP pointed to Regulation 9 (4) of the Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations, 2016 (CI 91), which reads: “The Commission shall include in the register of voters, the name of a person who qualifies for registration as a voter and is registered but shall not include in the register of voters the name of a person who qualifies to register as a voter for an election but who registers less than sixty days to that election.”

This means that even those with their names on the register can be dis enfranchised because of administrative convenience, the NPP argued.